"I, said the fly, with my little"—here the library was thrown open, and my step-mother, accompanied by a strange gentleman, walked laughingly into the room.
"Here are both my babies!" she exclaimed with a well feigned air of proud maternity, as she came towards us. "Are they not good little children?" she asked in grand condescension, looking up into the stranger's face, then turning abruptly around she said in her formal tone
"Amelia, this is Dr. Campbell."
I had sprung to my feet at sight of the intruders and stood distantly in the shadow of the window curtains. I was conscious of looking flushed and indignant, and did not relish the situation from any stand point. The sing-song testimony of the fly was still ringing in my ears, and I knew how very undignified and ridiculous it must have sounded to an uninterested stranger coming in suddenly upon us in this way.
Instead of going forward, therefore, with the careless simplicity becoming my years, I merely inclined my head from where I stood, and got perceptibly redder in the face. I must have looked up, since I afterwards remembered the tall serious man standing like a dark shadow in the doorway, but this was the only impression of him I could recall. While he was bending over Freddie in professional solicitude, I effected a stealthy retreat by the door that led into the garden and saw no more of him.
In less than a month afterwards I was bending over my Algebra in the study hall of the dear old Abbey, striving most perseveringly to master an obstinate, unknown quantity that baffled me considerably. I did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an algebraic equation.
I had worked at my task with a steady perseverance for nearly an hour, but other things distracted me and I could not succeed with it. I laid one cheek pensively in the palm of my idle hand and with the other, which held my busy pencil, I played a random tattoo on my desk. Before me on my paper was a confused multitude of a's and y's and z's which I had failed to master with any satisfaction, although I had repeated many a patient effort with placid, hopeful, good-humor.
Other thoughts quite alien to the subject I was then studying, began to suggest themselves as a sort of refreshment to my mind. My vacation at home among worldly people and pursuits seemed to have thrown open before my eyes the hitherto undreamt of arena of active experience, and whether I willed it or not my memory dwelt persistently at intervals upon all I had seen, and heard, and done during the fleeting summer months.
In a few moments I was far outside the limits of Notre Dame Abbey, hovering in spirit around the neighborhood of my home, calling up those faces and forms that had impressed me more than others. I went back to the embarassing meeting with Dr Campbell in the library, and as I thought over it I felt the warm blood rising within me and suffusing both my cheeks, as it is wont to do when any of the blunders of my life come back to me in my reverie.
What was most vexing to all in this case was that I could not resolve my floating memories of him into any definite outline or form, he was a mere shadow to me, that had flitted across my way for a short moment and then left me bewildered and wondering.